This episode of HamTalk Live is brought to you
by Tower Electronics. For connectors, cables,
and more, call 920 -435 -2973 or visit PL -259
.com. And by ICOM, heard it, worked it, logged
it. Visit www .icomamerica .com slash amateur
for more information about ICOM radios. With
Neorep, here we go Welcome to Hamtop Live Call
in, let's talk, Neil's your guy Hamtop Live Good
evening, everyone. It's time for HamTalk Live,
episode number 262, Field Day Q &A 2021, recorded
live on Thursday, June 24th, 2021. I'm your host,
Neil Rapp, WB9VPG. Thanks for tuning in to this
episode of HamTalk Live. Tonight, we're joined
by Paul Bork, N1SFE. Talking field day rules
and field day in general. We'll take your calls
live in just a few minutes. We're going to open
up the phone lines a little early tonight because
we want your calls. This is supposed to be a
question and answer session. So we want your
calls. We want your tweets. So we'll give out
the phone number here in a little bit and we're
going to open up the phone lines a little early
tonight and we've got some more stuff to talk
about if nobody calls. but we want to open it
up and get some phone calls. So that number is
859 -982 -7373 and we'll give that out here again
in a minute or so. Last week here on the show,
Joe Eisenberg, KZeroNEB, was here to talk about
some new kits and we talked about some choices
for surfaces on which to solder. And if you missed
that show, you can listen anytime at HamTalkLive
.com or on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube.
And you can catch the rebroadcast of HamTalk
Live on WTWW. That's 5085 AM, Saturday afternoons
at about 330 PM Eastern Time. So get your questions
ready to go for Paul if you're listening to us
live on Thursday night. You can give us a call
in just a little bit. And again, here is the
phone number so you can have it ready. It's 859
-982 -7373. Let me read it one more time. 859
-982 -7373. You can also tweet us, it's just
at HamTalkLive on Twitter, and I'll be back with
Paul right after this word from ICOM right here.
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the show. Check them out at icomamerica .com
slash amateur. Well, welcome back to ham talk
live tonight, Paul Bork in one SFE joins us on
the Orlando amateur radio club and hamcation
hotline a RRL contest program manager manager
Paul Bork in one SFE just Completed a second
full year in that role and Paul's been licensed
since 1994 and much like my story grew up listening
to distant AM stations and later developed a
career involving some aspects of broadcasting.
And he started at a broadcast station at the
university of Hartford, uh, where the station's
general manager, John Ramsey, W1JNR pushed him
to get his license. And, uh, so. The rest is
history. He grew up in Newington and wanted the
opportunity to give back to the hobby and now
he's He's working at Lee headquarters. So Paul,
welcome back to the show. I'm sorry. I can't
buy you a Ted steamed cheeseburger Next time
we come out we'll have to try some more local
cuisine out here Yeah, yeah, I need to come back
out and just enjoy you know, my time. When I'm
there, I'm there for Teachers Institute. And
so we have a full day. And it's very enjoyable,
don't get me wrong, but it is a full day. So,
you know, I need some time to just get out there
and just relax and enjoy the area. Well, it'd
be good to have you back. I know it's been a
couple years since we've done Teachers Institute.
Yeah, it has and and this year is virtual so
I'm interested to hear how that's going that's
coming up here in about three weeks same time
as Yoda camp actually so So I'm not going to
be able to check that out this year, but it'll
be interesting and there's a very good lineup
of people for that so um another thing that the
league is doing um but right now we're focused
on field day that it's coming up or or just two
days away and um when when you started planning
field day which is is like you're always planning
field day but When you started planning field
day for this year, we were all still wearing
masks and vaccines hadn't rolled out yet. And,
and boy has a lot changed in the last few weeks
and months. So everything was set up for, you
know, okay, just operate from home, just operate
from home, just operate from home. And now all
of a sudden it's like, Oh, well, if you're vaccinated,
you don't have to wear a mask. And so we can
get back together again. So, so how has field
day changed this year after the big change last
year? Well, as far as what we're doing rules
wise, we haven't really changed anything because,
you know, the Early on we didn't know where we
were going to be come late June and that was
that that was one of the things we had dealt
with last year and this year we decided to kind
of Set the the rules waivers in place early instead
of waiting because we again we didn't know where
we would be and there was always the option of
Going back to what would be considered more of
a normal regular field day or a traditional field
day If things have changed and we always had,
the league stance was always pay attention to
what your local and state and regional authorities
are saying as far as mask mandates, whether your
group feels safe. I mean, our biggest priority
is to making sure that groups feel safe. So there
was always the option of a participant operating
from home. And what we're seeing this year is
A lot more groups decided to do their traditional
Class A field day operations. And some members
of those groups were still opting to stay home
and contribute their scores to the club aggregate
score. So it's kind of, I'm seeing a lot of people
are emailing me saying. I want to work Class
D or Class E from home, and I want to put my
club score in. How do I attribute my score to
my club? How do I do it? And I'm also seeing
a lot of clubs saying, we're going ahead and
doing a field day. We're going to have a public
information table. We're going to open it to
the public, more in the traditional sense. So
I'm actually seeing more of a mix. Last year
was heavy on the Class D and E, and not so heavy
in the Class A. And I, you know, I didn't, I
didn't pull up that data last year. I had that
data for you, but it was really 90 % or so class
D and E home stations. And, you know, maybe not
even 10 % people running class A's. Yeah. So
it's been a lot different and let's talk about
this, this club aggregate score, because that's
something that was just introduced last year
for COVID. And it's a little easy to misconstrue
what's going on here with the club aggregate
score. So let's talk about that. So if I am going
to work from home, we can contribute to that
aggregate score, but we're not just adding our
points in. Right, so right, so the aggregate
score is completely done by the ARRL So in other
words if you're operating a class D or E from
home You're not taking your points and bring
it over to your club secretary and say here add
this to our score Well, what how the aggregate
score works and people who are more familiar
with with traditional amateur radio contesting
It kind of works the same way is People people
attribute their score to the club and then we
just add up everyone's individual scores and
put a club aggregate score out there. So what
happens is you'll enter your club name on the
entry form and we'll go by that. So in other
words, if you, we see, we see, I don't know,
to make up a club, Southern Kansas Amateur Radio
Club, we see people attributing their scores
to that same club. We add them all together and
Really, it's important to make sure you are using
A, the correct club name. In other words, Kansas
City Amateur Radio Club or ARC. I mean, we were
kind of hip enough to realize the abbreviations,
but some people get the names not even the same.
They're like, well, how come my score didn't
get attributed to my club? Well, because it's
all based on what your club name is in the entry.
So you don't send that into your club. You send
it into the ARL as a separate entry. Under your
own call sign and the club if they're also doing
a class a or b Will operate under their call
sign possibly their club sign or another call
sign But it's not the same call sign. So it's
based on the club name And you're just going
you're not going to put that in as like at the
top you're going to put that in Where it asks
you for a club, right? Right. You're going to
put your call sign in where it says call sign
and it says club or group name, and you're gonna
put the name of the club, and if you looked at
how we did the results last year, you'll see
there was a list of club aggregate scores right
on the top of the page. Actually, it was on page
72, QSP. I'm gonna actually pull the article
up. So you see the club aggregate scores. This
lists the name of the club, the total score of
all the entries that were submitted, and then
the total number of entries that were submitted.
For example, I'm just looking at the top of the
list. We had an aardvark wireless group, had
an aggregate score of 1200, 354, or 12 ,354 rather,
and 10 entries. So that was the all 10 entries
that had attributed their names to that club.
That's how we added up the score. And if there
was a class A in there under that same club,
they're added in there as well. Okay, so hopefully
everybody can get that figured out. Yeah, don't
just hand off your points to the club secretary.
I spent a lot of time, so how I get the scores
is when this is done, we have our website is
graciously and wonderfully programmed by Bruce
Horn. He hands me off an Excel file, or it's
a kind of separated file. So I have to work from
this master spreadsheet of every single entry
at every single club name. And we had to go and
vet every single club name and make sure they
were spelled right and edited. And, you know,
when we went and published these results, we
had over 10 ,000 entries in quite a few clubs
that we, that me and the editors at QST had a
painstakingly and, and, and really. Really carefully
make sure we got it right and I'm sure we missed
a few and it also took a lot of chocolate I have
to say I really think Jen and the editors at
QST and and Becky Schoenfeld and and all the
QST people for their support and their their
help in this because it was really it was it
was Quite a month getting that December issue
together and I really really want to send a shout
out to Jody Moran Who does the layout for QST?
She and I went over that time and time again,
and it was really it was painstaking and it was
it was getting stressful She has a love for Reese's
peanut butter cup, so I kept feeding her pieces
peanut butter cups other times As I was going
to say, it sounds like you may need to call Ted's
and bring in some of those steamed cheeseburgers
for those late night tallying sessions. There
was a lot of work that went into that. You know,
I feel bad when we miss one. Occasionally we
had one club. There's like, you know, you listed
us in two different entries. It's like, okay,
we'll change it in the online edition, but what's
in print is already out. So we tried as much
as we could to get them accurate, but it was
tough, because we had a lot of club names that
are similar. Like here, I'll pick some more,
I'm trying to find some more examples here, but
we had like Central Oregon Coast ARC, and Central
Oregon DX Club, and the people on the west coast,
notice how I pronounced the name, the state correctly.
You don't pronounce it Oregon. That's an East
Coast thing. Anyway, so you want to make sure
that, yes, they're both central Oregon, but you
want to make sure that you're selecting the right
club that you put in there, that you're entering
the right club name. Like another example here,
Charlotte ARC, Amateur Radio Club, Charlotte
ARS, Amateur Radio Society, two different clubs,
similar name. They may not even be in the same
state. I'm assuming they're in North Carolina,
but they may not be. Yeah, and then you've got
you've even got Deers you've got Deers the Dresden
Elementary Amateur radio society and then you've
got the Disney emergency amateur radio society
Those acronyms get you every time I'm glad you
brought that up aside from acronyms like ARC
and ARS We understand those if you if your club
is using an acronym, please do not use the acronym
when you enter your club score. It really made
it tough. It really made it tough. There's several
of them. There's one, Bears, V -E -A -R -S, and
there's also a Connecticut club, Bears of Manchester.
You just put in Bears. Well, a lot of times I'd
see what section they'd be in. And then you assume
okay, this guy's Associating it to Bears and
he's in Connecticut. Well, I think he means Bears
of Manchester Because of where they're located,
but that doesn't necessarily mean there are no
Restrictions and field day since it's not a contest.
There's no restriction. You don't have to be
in a club territory So in traditional contests,
you have to be within a defined territory to
contribute to your club and if you're not you
You have to be on an eligibility list. There's
none of that. You can attribute your score to
any club. You could be in Florida, attribute
one to that up in Alaska if you wanted to. If
you felt like setting your points their way,
you could. So it really is up to you. And again,
you really want to avoid acronyms and make sure
you have the club, the correct club you're attributing
your score to. Yeah, I think there's a Bears
in Chicago, too. The broadcast employees amateur
radio. I think that's right. One time there was.
And don't forget the Bears. The Bears. Yes, the
Bears are in Chicago. Well, hey, if you have
a question, give us a call. We're going to open
up the lives right now at 859 -988 - I'll give
you the number again in a minute. But go ahead
and call right now if you have a field day question
for Paul Bork in 1SFE. He is the contest manager
at ARRL. So go ahead and give us call 859 -982.
73 73 is the number and you can tweet us it's
at ham talk live and if you're on speaker you
can type in the comments and I'll check those
as we go on this evening so well we always do
this show each year at kind of the last minute
here to to kind of get through some of these
tricky little rule things and and You see those
mistakes you go through the whole painstaking
process of going through those CSV files what
are some of the Common mistakes you saw last
year and and and how did that that aggregate
group scoring go? Well, I mean, I think I kind
of touched on that before One of the most common
things is just not attributing to the correct
club another you know an AR ARS instead of an
ARC or Spelling the name of the club wrong because
you know I see as a different club now Spelling
errors are sometimes easy because they'll show
up next to each other alphabetically So there
was a lot of that and spelling errors where that
was more of an editing thing So and I think I
did see a couple scores where they added in their
scores to the main club's call side, and they
may not have even had an operation. Really, it
was more of just making sure that the club was
spelled and formatted similarly. Now, we tried
to program the web uploader for them to kind
of give you a suggestion of your club name. And
it won't cover all of them. It will only give
you suggestions based on what was previously
entered. And we went from the list from last
year to try to clean up the bad club names. So
if you start typing the word Manchester, for
example, and there's more than one Manchester
club, it'll give you a list of names. But if
your club name isn't on there for some reason,
because we're not limiting it to just ARRL affiliated
clubs or contest clubs, It will allow you to
type in the full name. So if you started to type
something in and spelled it wrong, that's going
to show up as a valid club name. But we did try
to help by having a drop -down list to try to
steer the clubs from entering the correct name.
So basically what happens is if the club's name
is not on the list, the first person that enters
it, it's going to show up as that. If that was
entered wrong, then somebody's going to go enter
it correctly. Then there will be two, one spelled
incorrectly or maybe with the wrong, something
different in the name, like, you know, county
instead of area, or, you know, there's a different
word in there, like, you know, northern county
this, instead of northern area this, there's
going to be both there. So we, it's really kind
of important to make sure, I think really what
I emphasized. was that club secretaries and the
people who were coordinating the field day with
people operating from home is that they let their
club know exactly how they wanted that name formatted
and really try to stick to as close to the official
club name as you can. I mean, sometimes you're
too long and you get edited when it goes to QSD
because of space limitations. So we do have that
too. So a lot of times you'll see counting will
be abbreviated to CO, ARC, radio club. A lot
of that happens on the QST ad, but that's more
for space limitations than for the entry form.
All right. Very good. Well, we're getting ready
to take a break, but we have a call on the line
and I don't want to miss it. So let's take the
call. Good evening. Welcome to HamTalk Live.
Good evening. Thanks for doing this. Hey, good
evening. Oh, you're very welcome. Who do we have
here? Yeah, my name is Robin. It's call sign
November 6th, Romeo Lima Sierra. And I'm in the
East Bay in California. And our club this year,
which normally does the 24 -hour field day and
sets up at a site and the people come by and
we do the whole shebang, this year we're teaming
up with another club and they're only doing part
of a day. And I think all we're doing uh... we're
helping them out and we're running the uh...
get on the air temp uh... and you know doing
what we can i don't think we're operating under
our normal club call five to be uh... helping
this other club but they're running under their
callsign my question is as a member of the uh...
first club the one that's helping the other one
out uh... if i eight want to assign uh... that
club As my club when I'm turning in my at -home
Scoring do they get the points even if they are
not actually doing it or should I use the other
clubs? Call sign or does any of that matter?
Alright, so let me see if I understand this correctly
because I'm kind of not so you're going to help
participate in the the other club, but you want
to work from home as well and contribute to Like
a class of the year he stations with different
clubs. Is that what I'm understanding? Yeah,
I did that last year with my own club of my own
club I believe turned in a report even though
we weren't well actually we did set up at somebody's
house and operated under the club's call sign
Okay, I think I understand so In other words,
if you submit a score under your club's name
and your club does not submit an entry, will
that still get attributed? Is that what you're
asking? Yeah, that's it. Yeah, yeah, it will.
So if you put the name of your home club and
they're not running a club station, your score
will still show up as being attributed to their
club score. Your Class D or E station from home
will show up as whatever club you attribute it
to. regardless of whether they have a Class A
or B. Okay, now I've got another fine point question.
I actually tweeted this in, so I don't know if
it's going to overlap or something, but I got
to wondering, some stuff like, you know, picking
up and getting the ARRL message, you know, that
you send out several times during field day,
that's worth a hundred points. Now with me and
Can other people in the club do the same thing?
We all send in the message because I don't know
precisely what everybody else is doing. Do those
scores add up or does the club just get one of
those 100 points? Okay, so what we're doing for
the aggregate scores is we're just taking the
sum of all the individual entries. So whatever
bonus points each station earns on their own
or whatever QSO points they earn on their own,
they're all going to get added up. So if 10 did,
the aggregate score would show 1 ,000 points
as being attributed to the club. So since everyone's
operating under their own call signs, we're treating
them as separate entries. We're just combining
the individual scores as an aggregate score.
So we're not cross -checking. If you work somebody
on 20 meters phone and somebody else worked the
same guy on 20 meters phone, we don't consider
it a dupe like you would if you were both working
at the club. under the club call sign. So it's,
you know, so you all work the same stations,
you get the same bonus points. And so the other
question I had while I got you on the phone here
was I also run the Twitter page for our club
and we've tweeted out that we're gonna be doing
this and we use the ARRLFD hashtag. Is that worth
pointing? So there are, I'm trying to find the
actual wording of it here in the rules Social
media 100 points for promoting your field day
activation to the general public by an active
recognized and utilized social media platform
now And it says Facebook Twitter Instagram, etc
This bonus is available only to amateur radio
clubs and field day groups that welcome visitors
to their operation. So it says Individual participants
do not qualify for this bonus. So you should
really be more of a club that is, you know, promoting
your social media activation like at a club,
like a public site. Okay, okay. Fine print department.
Here's the details on this. My club Twitter account
that I happen to be the one who runs it. put
out a notice that we are working with this other
club who is at a park where people can show up
and we gave the details of that and the operating
hours so people could come by and visit and so
forth. So we are helping the other club out.
The other club has some of our members there.
Is the other club claiming that bonus as well?
I would imagine they would be if they do it.
Yeah Yeah, so I mean that's kind of that's kind
of it. That's kind of a sticky point because
it you know You wouldn't want to have every member
of your club be be Be claiming that bonus if
you know no no no no no no no I'm just saying
that Well, yeah, I guess one person would have
to Send a photograph of the tweet in or something,
right? Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's I mean
if you want to you can always just you know If
you want to discuss it more detail, you can always
send me an email on my call sign There's no remember
once Sierra Fox Trot Echo SFV and I'm the end
one SFV at a RRL org. This is shooting email
You know, we could we could discuss that too
because it never really is It's a gray area.
I Guess the worst that would happen is it would
get rejected Yeah, and we really really it's
it's really it's really about the honor system
and you know and Really what the intent of the
rule is you know you're getting you're getting
the message out And we're working out. We're
not we're not gonna. We're not gonna nitpick
over little things like that You know really
it's about it's about it's about presenting amateur
radio to the public and promoting it right and
Getting out of here and having fun. I mean it's
That's one of the biggest things about field
day is really, I think, especially with the changes
the last couple of years, a lot of participants
got kind of hung up on the fine details of the
roles and kind of lost sight of the fact that
what is field day really all about? And it really
is about showcasing amateur radio to the public.
So I think you're kind of going in the right
direction with that. Okay, great. And by the
way, thanks for putting that insert into the
field day issue of QST, the guide for field day.
That was a great touch. And 73, thanks for doing
the show. All right, 73. And yeah, that was our
marketing department who came up with that one,
and that was a wonderful idea. So I believe that
was sponsored by somebody. I can't remember who
sponsored it off the top of my head. Some store
that sells ham radio equipment, I think was a
sponsor of that Who recently closed down their
Bay Area location by the way Robin thank you
so much for the call. We appreciate it It's always
a lot more fun when people call. So thank you
so much for calling and some good questions All
right, thank you. What's a call -in show with
no callers? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It'd be like
a Frasier Crane, didn't have anybody calling
us. Sometimes I feel like I'm a psychiatrist.
Or at least play one on TV. Well anyway, all
right. We're overdue for our break So we're gonna
take our break here and we're gonna come back
and we're gonna take some more of your calls
at eight five nine nine eight two seventy three
seventy three right after this word from tower
electronics right here on ham talk live Thanks
for choosing Tower Electronics. How may we help
you today? We have PL259s, we have in connectors,
we have SMA adapters, we have BNC adapters. What
can I show you today? Where's the tower? Well,
we don't actually have a tower with us, but we
have all kinds of things you can use with a tower.
We have power poles, antennas, soldering irons
and meters. Where's the tower? Ma 'am, that's
the name of our company. We can't haul towers
to all the ham -fests across the country that
we visit, but we have almost every connector
and adapter you would need to connect your antenna
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Visit us at a ham -fest near you or call 920
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Join the conversation. Give us a call at 859
-982 -7373. Again, the number to call is 859
-982 -7373. Or, if you'd rather type than talk,
tweet us at HamTalk Live. Now, here's Neil Rapp
with more HamTalk Live. CQ Field Day. CQ Field
Day. This is HamTalk Live with Neil Rapp. Welcome
back to HamTalk Live. Tower Electronics has all
kinds of stuff that you need to Put on your feed
lines and rigs and antennas They're gonna be
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at pl -259 .com Ham talk live is on the air every
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here at ham talk live comm and Be sure to check
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before we get back to your phone calls and tweets
and all that, it's time for our weekly segment,
the N9GSU Joke of the Week. Now it's time for
the HamTalk Live Ham Radio Joke of the Week,
the part of the show where Rick tells us a ham
radio joke. The HamTalk Live Ham Radio Joke of
the Week is brought to you by QRM Labs. Now,
here's Rick Garrett, N9GSU, with today's HamTalk
Live Joke of the Week. I had an antenna -raising
party last Saturday. We worked all morning and
then it was time to break for lunch, so I ordered
pizza. Everybody came in but Gary, he was still
up on the roof. So I walked outside and yelled
up, Gary, why are you still on the roof? He said,
well, you said pizza was on the house. This has
been the HamTalk Live, ham radio joke of the
week with Rick Garrett, N9 GSU. Tune in again
next week for another joke from Rick. Oh boy.
Pizza is on the house. I just have to say one
thing that's blah blah blah blah. So maybe that's
some of that some of that field day pizza. Yeah.
It's on the house. There we go. All right the
phone number eight five nine nine eight two seventy
three seventy three or tweet us at ham talk live
if you're on Spreaker you can type in the comments
and if you're listening to us on WTWW or on the
podcast edition you won't be able to reach us
live since we're doing this Thursday night and
Hopefully, we will hear you on this weekend at
field day. I'm going to be visiting a couple
of field days. I'll be at the Northern Kentucky
Amateur Radio Club. Let's see, is that K4CN?
I think it is. Before I head up to the Voice
of America Museum at the Westchester Amateur
Radio Association, WC8VOA. So that's where I
will be on the air. You're doing a bit of driving
there, huh? You're doing a bit of driving there,
huh? Yes, I will be driving there. Oh, I mean,
I would say, you know, is Westchester from Kentucky
quite a hall? Eh, it's about an hour. Not quite
an hour, depending on traffic. It just seems
to wander, because there are two different states.
Yeah, yeah, but when the state line is 20 minutes
away, you know, that's the way it goes. That's
right, because you're down by Cincinnati, right?
Yes, yeah, we're just on the Kentucky side of
Cincinnati now so So I'm going to visit the club
here and then I got a bunch of projects going
on up north so we'll get up to the The Westchester
Club for the evening. So that'll be that'll be
a lot of fun Well again, if you have a question,
give us a call. This is your your chance to get
a question from the expert it's eight or an answer
from the expert it's 859 -982 -7373 and let me
check the the tweets here and make sure we're
not missing anything i see robin's tweet but
we got to that one so i think we're i think we're
in good shape now one other thing and i know
we talked about this with with a couple of My
friends from the Westchester amateur radio association
here. I think it was earlier today actually with
Jocelyn Talking about the battery from home And
which class it is and I know we talked about
it on the show last year. So Let's let's straighten
out the difference between the bonus points and
and the class for that battery Okay, so first
off we have the two home, the quote unquote home
station classes. Now I have people question me
on this too. A home station doesn't necessarily
mean someone's home. It means a permanent licensed
location. That could be a club, a club field
house where it's a permanent, where they have
a station set up. That technically, if you're
running on commercial power, is a class D, Delta.
Is that a station operating from permanent or
licensed station locations using commercial power?
So it's a class D Delta. No, it's just, we'll
just strip that down just to the class first.
Class E, Echo, is home stations on emergency
power. Again, same as class D, but using emergency
power for transmitters and receivers. So if you're
operating entirely on battery from home, You
would be a class E echo, because that would be
emergency power. The same thing would apply if
you were autogenerator on class E. You'd be class
E, but you wouldn't be running on battery. So
you'd still be class E. But if you're a home
station on battery, you also qualify for bonus
points. You qualify for the 100 % emergency power
if you're on emergency power the whole time,
regardless of whether that's a battery or a generator.
But if you're running on battery and, again,
no motor generator and your QRP, power level
of less than five watts, you also qualify for
the five -time power multiplier. So there's the
power multiplier. which multiplies your points,
your eqsos, by a different factor depending on
whether you're on emergency power or not. If
you're odd, if you look at the, if you look at
that bonus point, it is you have to be running
five watts or less and you're powered from something
other than a motor -driven generator or commercial
power. That can be batteries charged by solar
wind, whatever, or solar wind. So in other words,
you have to be qrp and you're running and you're
running less than less than a five watch or less
runner does that make any sense yeah it does
it does well yeah don't confuse don't confuse
the class with the um don't confuse the class
with the with the power multiplier so for home
stations you have you have a home station on
Battery power, but if you're under five watts
you get a different power multiplier now that
could be they could be confusing household class
Bravo be battery Which is a field day station
set up operated by no more than two persons,
right? But they are not at a permanently licensed
station location. There is a class Bravo battery,
which is Has that same thing you feel they should
set up and operated by no more than two persons
All contacts must be made with an output power
of five watts or less and the power source must
be something other than commercial needs or a
generator So that is where the where the five
um, the five time Power multiplier comes in Well,
let's open it up one last time here 8 5 9 9 8
2 73 73 if you have a question, this is your
last call here 8 5 9 9 8 2 73 73 and We'll finish
things up here. So so what what are you doing
for field day? We talked about what I'm doing.
What are you doing? Well, we have that mighty
w1aw being activated for the weekend, so I was
hoping to get over there for a little bit but
We've got it. We got a busy weekend here at home
So I'm hoping to be able to get over there at
some point I'm not quite sure whether that's
gonna personally happen for me I would love to
get on it and be one of the w1aw operators because
it's it's always a thrill to be the recipient
of the pileup than being the other side I tell
you though, as I was telling you before the show,
Neil, I may be the contest manager, but I play
when I'm on TV. Oh no, Bob. I may be the contest
manager, but I'm not really, I'm not a die -hard
contest. I'm more of a casual contestor. I get
overwhelmed by pile -ups. The first time I did
a pile -up was actually field day in 2019, and
I was so overwhelmed. I had to step away and
Bart, W9JJ, stepped in and ran it like a season
pro. Well, the season pro that he is. It's always
a thrill to get behind and get on the RW1AW.
Because of COVID, it hasn't even been open up
to staff, let alone visitors. So I haven't had
an opportunity to even operate there. I did...
I did record a presentation for the ARL Learning
Network over there, so it was probably one of
the first times I've been in there since the
pandemic hit. So it's always really... I can
attest that anytime you get on W1AW, you will
get a pile up, even if it's Tuesday afternoon
at one o 'clock, you'll get a pile up. So I can
only imagine what they are during field day.
You know, the first time I operated at W1AW is
when I went to the league for my job interview
and after the end of my interview I interviewed
Bart and he says, well, do you want to go see
W1AW? So we walked over and Joe, I had J1Q, said,
hey, do you want to operate? Well, yeah. And
the bands were dead. He put me on 20, it was
the middle of the day. and the bands were dead,
so I didn't even call CQ, I was actually just
scanning around the dial and I caught two CUSOs
in progress and I caught them both at the end
and I jump in after the guys are clearing each
other, I get on and say, you know, whiskey one,
alpha whiskey, there's this long silence and
then... Did you just say and then they were both
like they're both stations. It was the same thing
You were like, oh my god, I've never worked w1aw.
This is so awesome It really you know, it really
makes it really makes you feel good I remember
field day that field day in 2019. I Worked the
station and they said this is my first hf contact
And I wish I had remembered the call sign because
I again I was running a pile up so I didn't have
time to even write that call sign down because
I really would have loved to have included that
in the field day article that you know, you know
this this station making their first HF contact
as a field day participant and it worked W1AW
and they were thrilled as their first HF. Always
a thrill. I remember the first time I operated
W1AW on lunch break while I was over there. I
got South Africa twice. It's like, wait a minute,
you know? And I didn't even really think about
it. I just logged it and kept on going. And then
I was like, wait a minute, that was South Africa
and twice. Yeah, Joe Karcher says that W1AW automatically
adds, just the call sign automatically adds like
10 dB to your signal. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Now if you put a YL on it W1 AW then that extra
3 DB there, so yeah Well Paul we are out of time
and I think we've we've hit all the questions
so we'll wish everyone a great field day whether
you're operating at home or with a group and
Things are starting to get back to whatever normal
is. And so maybe next year, it'll all be back
to normal. We'll wait and see. But whatever you
do this weekend, we wish you well. And Paul,
any closing comments here before we shut things
down tonight? Yeah, I'm going to repeat what
I said earlier. Get out there and get on the
air and have fun. Really, the key is to have
fun. Hopefully maybe we'll introduce some new
people to amateur radio or maybe even inspire
the next generation of amateur operators. Just
get out there and show everyone what the best
amateur radio can be. and demonstrate there's
so many different facets. Field day is really
what you make of it, whether it's an emergency
preparedness exercise, whether you do consider
it a contest, even though we don't officially
consider it a contest. Just get out there and
really take from it what part of it you want
and have fun. Yeah, it is a fun time. Make the
most of it. Well, thanks, Paul, for coming on
the show again. We do this every year and I appreciate
you continuing the tradition and answering the
questions and you got a couple of stumpers tonight.
So good job with that. Thanks for having me on.
It's always great talking to you and hopefully
we'll see you out here in the East Coast again.
Yeah, that would be great. I'm looking forward
to getting away. That is a wrap for this week's
edition of HamTalk Live. Thanks to my guest Paul
Bork, N1SFE, and everybody out there in cyberspace
for listening and calling in and typing in and
invite you back next Thursday night at 9 p .m.
Eastern Time. For a list of all of our upcoming
guests, visit HamTalkLive .com. And if you like
the show, please leave us a review. That helps
others. find us faster. So for now, this is Neil
Rapp, WB9VPG, saying 7 -3, 7 -5, have a great
field day and may the good DX be yours. And I
didn't